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The NCAA is bringing sporting events back to North Carolina after state lawmakers repealed large portions of the controversial “Bathroom Bill” — although the collegiate sports organization isn’t exactly enthused about the deal.

In a statement on Monday, the group says its governors reached their decision “reluctantly.”

That law, which was passed more than a year ago, required transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate and blocked cities and counties from passing protections for LGBT people, among other things.

In response, the NCAA pulled planned championship events from North Carolina, saying the law would make it “challenging” to promote an inclusive atmosphere at sporting events.

Last week, North Carolina lawmakers reached a compromise to repeal most of the effects of the law, known as House Bill 2 or HB2. The deal prohibits local communities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances for at least three years. That will block cities from imposing their own protections for LGBT people.

As we reported, the deal made a lot of people unhappy. Conservative supporters of HB2 saw it as a betrayal of principle. Supporters of LGBT rights, meanwhile, denounced the prohibition on LGBT protections.

The NCAA isn’t delighted either.

“As with most compromises, this new law is far from perfect,” the group said in a statement. The NCAA governors worried that by blocking cities from protecting “basic civil rights,” the state was sending “a signal that discriminatory behavior is permitted and acceptable.”

But the NCAA also noted that the situation in North Carolina now resembles that in other places where the group willingly holds championships. (In most states, it is legal to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and at least one other state bars local anti-discrimination ordinances.)

In short, the NCAA determined the compromise reached in North Carolina “has minimally achieved a situation where we believe NCAA championships may be conducted in a nondiscriminatory environment.”

Championships scheduled for 2017-2018 will be held as originally planned in North Carolina, and the state will be considered for future championship bids.

The NCAA reserves the right to “take necessary action” if it finds the environment in North Carolina prevents it from enforcing its own anti-discrimination policies.

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Monday night’s national title game was expected to be a fast-paced, competitive showcase for North Carolina forward Justin Jackson and Gonzaga point guard Nigel Williams-Goss, two of the best players in college this season.

It was certainly competitive, but with both teams’ tough defenses locking up the main offensive options, the game turned into a foul-laden slog rather than a shootout. The Tar Heels were able to pin their opponent in the end, 71-65, winning the school’s sixth national title.

Fittingly it was empty possessions by Gonzaga in the final minute that put the game away, as North Carolina ended the game on a 9-2 run.

With Jackson struggling — he shot 6-19 and missed nine three-pointers — junior point guard Joel Berry II stepped up, scoring 22 and hitting the UNC’s only four three-point shots, and was named the tourney’s most outstanding player. Forward Isaiah Hicks added 13 points and 10 rebounds.

For North Carolina, it was a title to make up for a near-miss against Villanova in 2016, in which the Wildcats answered a last-second prayer with one of their own to win.

Tar Heels coach Roy Williams, who collected his third title in the 100th tournament game of his long career, said his players wanted redemption and were tough enough to take it. North Carolina had far more points in the paint than Gonzaga.

“Both teams played extremely hard,” Williams said. “I don’t think either team played very well.”

The Tar Heels got their first win this season while being out-rebounded, thanks to 14 turnovers by the Bulldogs. The two teams combined to shoot less than 35 percent from the field.

Gonzaga, hampered by both Williams-Goss’ 5-17 shooting and serious front-line foul trouble — wonder freshman Zach Collins fouled out with more than five minutes to go — the Bulldogs got an unexpected contribution from guard Josh Perkins, who scored 13 (all in the first half) after averaging five points in his earlier five tourney games.

Williams-Goss did get nine rebounds and six assists. Center Przemek Karnowski and forward Killian Tillie — pressed into service because of the foul trouble — both grabbed nine rebounds as well. The Bulldogs shot worse than their opponent for the first time all season, and went more than eight straight minutes in the second half without making a field goal.

For most of the first half of Monday’s game, Gonzaga — making the school’s first appearance in the Final Four — seemed to be playing to their strengths — and North Carolina’s.

The country’s best defensive team wasn’t just cutting off the Tar Heels’ fast break and forcing them into bad shots, they were also grabbing more rebounds than one of the best rebounding teams in the country. North Carolina had lost all three games in which they were out-rebounded this season.

But in the last four minutes of the half, North Carolina evened out both the rebound margin and the score, cutting Gonzaga’s game-high seven-point lead to three at the half. Good three-point shooting by the Bulldogs (5-9, vs. 2-12 for the Tar Heels) helped give them the lead, but turnovers kept them from getting away.

As halftime ended, North Carolina coach Williams said his players weren’t moving enough on offense, and were settling for the shots Gonzaga wanted them to take. The Tar Heels drove the ball inside far more in the second half, getting easier shots, building up the fouls on Gonzaga and gaining an edge they needed to win.

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Last updated at 9:30 p.m. ET

By now, it’s fair to say South Carolina is a better team than Mississippi State. The Gamecocks’ 67-55 win in the title game Sunday was South Carolina’s third — and most convincing — win over the Bulldogs this season.

The women’s first basketball championship is all the more impressive since the team lost senior center Alaina Coates to an ankle injury before the tournament started.

A’ja Wilson, the tournament’s deserving MOP (Most Outstanding Player), led the Gamecocks’ fourth quarter surge that put the game away. Six-foot-five-inch Wilson, who scored eight of her game-high 23 points that final quarter, came out in force with rebounds and blocked shots.

But Wilson certainly wasn’t the only South Carolina player of note. Shooting guards Allisha Gray and Kaela Davis made their usual contributions: Gray scored 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, while Davis scored 10 points.

The Gamecocks, as usual, played very good defense. Special mention should go to 5-foot-6-inches point guard Bianca Cuevas-Moore. She guarded Mississippi State point guard Morgan William, the Bulldogs star of the tournament, who hit the shot at the buzzer to beat UConn. Cuevas-Moore did a fantastic job of denying the ball from William, noticeably taking William out of her game.

The TV broadcasters reported that Mississippi State head coach Vic Shaefer yelled at William in the huddle, asking her if she was going to put in the maximum effort. Schaefer benched William for the entire fourth quarter — a painful moment for a player who came into the game as the tournament darling.

“William was upset, but answered questions with class, grace” tweeted ESPN.com’s Mechelle Voepel. “She’s still one of the big heroes in NCAA women’s tournament history.”

Not only was this South Carolina’s first ever women’s championship, it’s the first for head coach Dawn Staley. Staley was a highly decorated player in high school, college and the Olympics. She made several Final Fours playing for Virginia, but never won. She finally did, tonight, aThe lady Gamecocks earned their first national basketball title with a 67-55 win over Mississippi State. It’s also a first for former college player, Coach Dawn Staley, who had made several Final Fours for Virginia.s a coach.

Our original post follows:

Mississippi State plays South Carolina today for the championship of women’s Division I college basketball and no, that is not a typo. Four-time defending champion UConn is not playing for a fifth straight title because, of course, Mississippi State upset the Huskies Friday night in a national semifinal game.

What’s being called the greatest upset in the history of women’s college basketball delivered impressive TV ratings and was, according to ESPN, the most-streamed Women’s Final Four game ever, based on total viewers.

Will it be a hard act to follow? Definitely. But for fans who marveled at the way Mississippi State outplayed UConn for most of the game, they can expect more of the same great basketball today.

“To make it this far and not finish it off, that would be tough,” Bulldogs point guard Morgan William told the Washington Post yesterday.

“We’d just be the underdogs who got lucky.”

Morgan and more

Finishing it off means beating a South Carolina team that won both of its matchups with Mississippi State this season — the most recent, a 10-point win in last month’s Southeastern Conference Tournament championship game.

But as the Bulldogs showed Friday, they are a talented, driven group that has every reason to believe the sports adage that it’s hard to beat a team three times.

William, of course, is the Bulldog of the moment — the 5–foot-5-inch player nicknamed “Itty Bitty,” sank the winning jump shot at the buzzer against UConn. It was her second straight spectacular performance. She scored 41 points in Mississippi State’s win over number one seed Baylor in the Elite Eight.

“I feel like with her and with us it’s heart over height,” Bulldogs forward Breanna Richardson said in the Washington Post. “You can’t dictate the play of someone based on how short they are. You have to take them for who they are, and I feel like Morgan is making a statement for that across the world.”

“Heart over height” is a nice motto. But in fact, height also is one of the reasons Mississippi State is playing for the championship. Six-foot-7-inch sophomore center Teaira McCowan gave UConn fits inside. Senior post player Chinwe Okorie is 6 feet 5 inches tall.

Junior guard Victoria Vivians is another important part of this team. ESPN.com women’s basketball writer Mechelle Voepel says Vivians was the recruit head coach Vic Schaefer pursued the hardest when he took over the program in 2012.

“She was a scoring sensation as a schoolgirl in Mississippi,” Voepel says, “and [Schaefer] felt that if Mississippi State was going to have a chance to be a great program, it was going to have to keep [Vivians] in state.”

Voepel says Vivians has struggled at times this season with her scoring. Schaefer took her out of the starting lineup at the start of the NCAA tournament, but put her back in before the Regional final against Baylor. Vivians responded and, Voepel says, “She’s been a really crucial factor in the wins over Baylor and UConn.”

But while Mississippi state has the talent, heart and a sudden national following, the Bulldogs face an extremely tough opponent in South Carolina.

Third time a charm? Maybe not

Yes, it’s hard to beat a team three times –- but there are a number of reasons why the Gamecocks could do that with Mississippi State.

South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley is past her playing prime but the former college, pro and Olympic star has her Gamecocks poised to make the most of their first-ever appearance in the championship game.

Morgan William darts like a waterbug on the court, but South Carolina guards have a lot of speed as well, particularly the Gamecock’s itty bitty, 5-foot-6-inch point guard Bianca Cuevas-Moore.

As is often the case with South Carolina, a big factor in Sunday’s game is how well A’ja Wilson plays. Wilson is a 6-foot-5-inch first team All American. She doesn’t have her counterpart, senior center Alaina Coates, to share duties around the basket. Coates has been out with an ankle injury for the entire tournament and Wilson’s had to carry the load inside. How she battles Mississippi State’s “bigs” could play a big role in the game’s outcome.

Even if the Bulldogs contain Wilson, South Carolina can rely on offense from shooting guards Allisha Gray and Kaela Davis and defense. Always defense with the Gamecocks, who, in the two games against Mississippi State this season, held Bulldogs top scorer Vivians under her season average.

Don’t forget the Huskies

This will be the first time since 2012 that women’s Division I college basketball crowns a champion not named UConn. But don’t shed a tear for the Huskies – it appears they’ll be back in the title picture very soon.

All the key players who went 36-0 this season before losing Friday night, will be back next season. UConn signed the top incoming high school player in the country, high-scoring 6-foot-1-inch guard Megan Walker and the Huskies have two top transfers, both post players, including 6-foot-6-inch Azura Stevens who played two seasons at Duke and whose transfer prompted criticism of UConn head coach Geno Auriemma. Friday, his critics had a measure of satisfaction. But anti-UConn gloaters beware. The Huskies now have the best talent, again, and an edge. Losing makes a team cranky even if the losses are several years apart.

And as ESPN.com’s Mechelle Voepel points out, the last time UConn lost in the NCAA tournament was 2012. Notre Dame beat the Huskies in overtime, in a national semifinal game.

UConn went on to win the next four national championships.

Meaning, perhaps, Mississippi State, or South Carolina — enjoy tonight while you can.

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In a hectic finish, the North Carolina Tar Heels were able to hold off the Oregon Ducks, 77-76.

North Carolina now advances one step closer to a redemptive title after losing at the buzzer in last season’s championship game. This time they’ll play Gonzaga Monday night.

Down the stretch, with the Tar Heels holding a slim lead, the semifinal didn’t have the feel of a game that close. Perhaps because a series of timeouts disrupted the rhythm; perhaps because there wasn’t a sense that the Ducks could make a final push to get past the Tar Heels.

Oregon couldn’t deliver long-range shots in the second half — the Ducks missed 15 of their eighteen 3-point shot attempts. And North Carolina, as expected, was dominant inside. Although the rebounding total was even for the game at 43, North Carolina big man Kennedy Meeks, 6’10” at 260 pounds, had his way against the undersized Ducks’ front line. The senior forward led the Tar Heels with 25 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.

It’s this game that Oregon really missed Chris Boucher, one of the Ducks’ biggest players and best shot blockers — he suffered a knee injury before the tournament started. Tyler Dorsey led the Ducks with 21 points, while Dylan Ennis finished with 18 points, six rebounds and three assists.

Still, Oregon nearly pulled off the upset win. In a rare show of futility, first Meeks then North Carolina star guard Joel Berry II missed all four of the attempted free throws in the final seconds of the game. UNC was clinging to a 1-point lead at the time, so all Oregon had to do was corral one of the misses, take possession of the ball and get a shot up that might win the game. But Oregon couldn’t corral. Meeks’ and Berry’s misses were rebounded by teammates, so Oregon never got that last chance. It was fitting that rebounding ultimately decided the game, since going into the contest, North Carolina had the advantage, being one of the top rebounding teams in the country.

The Tarheels head to the championship game Monday night against Gonzaga. Tar Heels fans needn’t be reminded that North Carolina lost a heartbreaker to Villanova last season on a buzzer beating shot in the final.

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Before Friday night’s national semifinal game, the Mississippi State women’s basketball coach gave an unusual motivational speech.

“I will not be scared,” Vic Schaefer told his players. “There is no reason to be scared. You are one heck of a basketball team.”

The tactic makes more sense in light of the opponent: 36-0 University of Connecticut, riding a 111-game winning streak that included a 60-point thrashing of Mississippi State in last year’s Sweet 16. At the time, it was the worst defeat in tournament history.

On Friday night, Mississippi wiped all that away, prevailing 66-64 on Morgan William’s overtime buzzer-beater. Connecticut hadn’t lost since Nov. 17, 2014.

The Lady Bulldogs came right at the Huskies from the start, doubling up Connecticut 27-13 early in the second quarter and taking a 36-28 lead into halftime. That was just the second time all season, and the fourth time in the Huskies’ lengthy winning streak, that the team had trailed at the half.

It was Connecticut that was playing scared, coach Geno Auriemma told his players at halftime, junior forward Gabby Williams said.

Auriemma, making his 10th straight appearance in the Final Four, said earlier in the day that this year’s team lacked killer instinct, KERA’s Gus Contreras reported.

“They haven’t become what I hoped they would become — you know, like, edgy,” he said. “They just have this attitude like, ‘Everything will be fine, don’t worry about it.’ And yet they keep winning.”

Connecticut recovered quickly after halftime, taking their first lead within three minutes. But that momentum dissipated, leading to a back-and-forth game the rest of the way and tie scores after the third and fourth quarters.

Mississippi State had a chance to win at the end of regulation, but Lady Bulldogs guard Morgan William passed up a wide-open three-pointer for a drive to the basket that was smothered by Connecticut’s Gabby Williams.

A flagrant foul with less than 30 seconds left in overtime let Connecticut tie the score and have a chance for the last shot, but a turnover gave William the second chance she needed.

The 5-foot-5 William — hero for the second game in a row after scoring 41 against Baylor — ended the game with 13 points, six assists and three steals. Junior guard Victorian Vivians led the Lady Bulldogs with 19 points. Gabby Williams led Connecticut with 21 points on 7-12 shooting, as well as eight rebounds and four blocks. Sophomore guard Katie Lou Samuelson added 15 points and five rebounds.

After the game Auriemma said the outcome didn’t surprise him, and suggested the team might not have been mature enough for the intensity of the Final Four.

“We talk about it all the time how hard it is to win in this environment,” he said. “At this time of the year you start thinking about what’s at stake. Maybe we just weren’t ready for this.”

He said his message to the Huskies after the game was that “college basketball has given them a log, you know? They’ve sent a lot of kids to the locker room over the years feeling the way they’re feeling.”

In the first game of the night, South Carolina, a 1-seed, pulled away in the fourth quarter to avoid an upset against Stanford, a 2-seed, 62-53. It’s the Gamecocks’ first trip to the championship game.

South Carolina was led by junior guard Allisha Gray, who scored 18 points on 7-14 shooting and had 8 rebounds. Junior forward A’ja Wilson, an Associated Press first-team All-American, added 19 rebounds and 13 points. Stanford’s senior forward Erica McCall and sophomore forward Alanna Smith each scored 14 points and pulled down more than a dozen rebounds in the losing effort.

Stanford had led 29-20 at halftime, but South Carolina dominated the second half, The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., reports, scoring 42 after being held to 20 in the first, and holding Stanford to a season low of 24 second-half points:

“Staley said she could tell during halftime that her team would be fine.

” ‘The looks in their faces weren’t looks of defeat. It was looks of, “Ok, we’re going to figure it out,” ‘ she said. ‘We couldn’t play that sleep time basketball. We were allowing Stanford to put us to sleep, and we knew they were going to do that. We just had to get to halftime and make our adjustments. No matter how much we were down I felt like we were going to make a comeback.’ “

Mississippi State and South Carolina, both members of the Southeastern Conference, played twice this year, with South Carolina winning both games by scores of 64-61 and 59-49.

The title game will be 6 p.m. ET on Sunday in Dallas, and will air on ESPN.

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Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the world’s most recognizable people.

An international soccer superstar, blessed with good looks and a golden foot, Ronaldo indisputably stands as one of the greatest to take the pitch. He’s so beloved, in fact, that he just got an international airport named after him in his native Madeira Islands in Portugal — plus a bust fashioned in his likeness.

“Seeing my name being given to this airport is something very special,” Ronaldo told reporters at the unveiling Wednesday. “Everyone knows that I am proud of my country and especially my home city.”

It was a lovely, heartfelt moment — but real quick, could we get back to that bust?

It is, well … perhaps a bit inaccurate to say it’s his likeness. The bust to some may bear less of a resemblance to the legendary forward than it does to another figure of recent legend: “Scary Lucy,” the life-size bronze statue of Lucille Ball that bared its teeth at park-goers for years in Celoron, N.Y.

The Associated Press astutely breaks down some of the, er, discrepancies:

“The bronze bust squashes the player’s eyes close together, and the cheeky raised-eyebrow smile more resembles a leer. The face is also unusually chubby, in contrast to Ronaldo’s chiseled looks.”

“It’s always a great honor to work on project like that,” the bust’s sculptor, Madeira native Emanuel Santos, told local TV channel RTP, according to the AP. The wire service notes he says it took him 15 days to finish the work.

“I still haven’t had the chance to personally talk to [Ronaldo], but I’ll try to reach out to him to know his feedback.”

Naturally, the denizens of Twitter, never ones to leave a single snark unspent, didn’t hesitate to offer some less-than-generous feedback of their own.

Some were quick to note that the bust isn’t the first time Ronaldo has been depicted in bronze — nor is it the first time that such a bronze has received the wrong kind of attention. In 2014, he got a 10-foot statue set up outside his personal museum, the CR7 Museum, which had opened the year before in Funchal, the capital of the Madeira archipelago.

Let’s have another look at that statue.

OK, back to the bust …

… which, like nearly everything else on the Internet, returned in the end to that mysterious reigning king of all sports memes: Crying Jordan.

NPR’s Laurel Wamsley contributed to this report.

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USA Hockey says it has a pay deal with players on the women’s team, averting a threatened boycott of the world championships, which start Friday near Detroit.

Before the agreement team captain Meghan Duggan told NPR’s All Things Considered that she and her teammates were paid poorly:

“USA Hockey pays us, as the women’s players, only during a six-month period of time out of the four-year Olympic cycle. During that six months, USA Hockey pays the players $1,000 a month for a six-month period. The remaining three and a half years, USA Hockey pays the players virtually nothing.”

The players said Tuesday that they now have a four-year agreement that pays players outside the six months before the Olympics. Duggan said players “stood up for what we thought was right and USA Hockey’s leadership listened,” according to the Associated Press.

The women have been very successful despite the low pay, reports the Two-Way’s Camila Domonoske:

“The existing U.S. national team is a dominant player in women’s ice hockey — they’ve medaled in all five Olympic Games that featured women’s hockey and won the world championships seven times since 2000. (Over the same time frame, the men won two Olympic and two World Championship silvers.) …

“Approximately half of the national team players hold ‘second or third jobs,’ according to a press release from the lawyers representing the team.

“Players on the men’s national team can also play on the NHL — where the minimum salary is more than half a million dollars. The NWHL, meanwhile, recently slashed its salaries, which were $10,000-$26,000 before the pay reduction.

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By an overwhelming 31-1 vote, NFL owners have approved the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas — though the team will still remain in the Bay Area for at least the 2017 season and possibly longer.

“My father always said, ‘the greatness of the Raiders is in its future,’ ” Raiders owner Mark Davis said in a statement Monday, “and the opportunity to build a world-class stadium in the entertainment capital of the world is a significant step toward achieving that greatness.”

The move — whenever it should inevitably take place — will end the Raiders’ on-again, off-again relationship with the team’s longtime home. Founded in 1960, the Raiders spent their first two decades as a club in Oakland, notching two Super Bowl titles before they left town for Los Angeles in the early 1980s.

That southern sojourn ended in 1995, when the team returned to the waiting embrace of the city it left more than a decade earlier.

But recently, Davis had appeared to be itching to leave the city once more, going in on a bid with the Chargers to move both teams to Los Angeles — a bid that voted down by NFL owners early last year. The Chargers ultimately did complete a deal to move to LA earlier this year, though.

Now, the Raiders will be joining the Vegas Golden Knights — an expansion ice hockey team recently also approved by the NHL — as the shiny new professional franchises in a city that long had none to call its own.

“It truly is an exciting time to be from Las Vegas,” Golden Knights chairman and CEO said in a statement, according to ESPN. “There is only a select group of cities in North America that are home to both an NHL and an NFL franchise and Vegas is now one of them. This alone should be a great source of pride for our community and our fans.”

ESPN noted that the Raiders’ star quarterback, Derek Carr, tweeted a statement thick with mixed feelings about the move.

Still, Carr and Co. will have a little while longer to get their things packed — likely years, in fact.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, “The Raiders have previously said they plan to remain in Oakland until at least 2020” — partly because the stadium the team intends to share with University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is not expected to be ready until then. And The Washington Post points out the Raiders have a lease on their Oakland stadium that gives them one-year term options for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

The jury’s out on how well this long goodbye will play with the team’s Bay Area fan base.

“I just hope that in the future, as we play in Oakland this year, that they understand that it wasn’t the players, it wasn’t the coaches that made this decision. It was me that made it. And if they have anybody to talk to about it, it should be me,” Davis said at a news conference.

“And I will, in the coming days, try to explain to them what went into making this difficult decision.”

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Stare hard at your March Madness brackets because the weekend is over and we are down to the Final Four:

When South Carolina faces Gonzaga in the NCAA final four playoffs in Arizona on Saturday, it will be the first time both the seventh-seeded Gamecocks and the No. 1 seeded Bulldogs have played their way into the semifinals.

The Oregon Ducks, which haven’t been to the final four since they won the very first tournament back in 1939, will have to outplay the UNC Tarheels who were last in the Final Four, well, last year, and has, according to the Los Angeles Times, made more Final Four appearances than any other team.

A lot of unexpected teams in the mix this year and many people didn’t see the basketballs bouncing this way, including Gary Parrish of CBS Sports:

I had Duke, Gonzaga, Kansas and UCLA heading to Phoenix. So this is not the Final Four I expected. But let’s be honest. This is not the Final Four you expected either.

South Carolina?

Who had South Carolina winning the East?

Oregon?

Who had Oregon winning the Midwest?

I mean, when a school some have forever insisted would never make a Final Four finally making the Final Four is among the least surprising things, you have, by definition, a surprising Final Four. So, absolutely, this is a surprising Final Four — even though it’s a Final four featuring three league champions and two No. 1 seeds.

But, as Zach Helfund wrote in the LA Times, “this year’s collection of teams is an ode to quiet toil.”

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